CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship:
InterAsian Contexts and Connections
&
Global Summer Semester Residency
at the University of Göttingen

Applications due September 27, 2017

The Social Science Research Council is pleased to invite preliminary applications for its expanded and enhanced Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship, funded with generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Following on four successful grants cycles, through which more than sixty-five individual fellowships totaling nearly 2.5 million USD have been awarded, the SSRC is continuing its transregional grants program, offering a 2018 Junior Scholar grants competition and awarding approximately fifteen grants of up to $45,000 to researchers in any world region. These fellowships help junior scholars (those at the postdoctoral stage, up to five years out of the PhD) complete first books and/or undertake second projects.

In addition, working closely with the Global and Transregional Studies Platform at the University of Göttingen in Germany, the SSRC is pleased to offer a short-term fellowship opportunity in 2018—the SSRCGlobal Summer Semester Residencyat the University of Göttingen (approximate residency dates: April 15, 2018–July 15, 2018).

These fellowships are aimed at supporting transregional research, strengthening the understanding of issues and geographies that do not fit neatly into existing divisions of academia or the world, and developing new approaches, practices, and opportunities in international, regional, and area studies. In addition to funding research, the fellowships will create networks and shared resources that will support fellows well beyond the grant period through intensive workshops and activities that promote transregional perspectives on individual campuses. The Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship and Global Summer Semester Residency will thus provide promising scholars support at critical junctures in their careers, advance transregional research, and establish structures for linking scholars across disciplines in the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences.

The broad intellectual thrust of the fellowships will continue to be InterAsian Contexts and Connections, or the reconceptualization of Asia as an interlinked historical and geographic formation stretching from West Asia through Eurasia, Central Asia, and South Asia to Southeast Asia and East Asia. In addition, applications that explore the networks that connect Asia with Africa are encouraged for the 2018 awards cycle. Proposals should bear upon processes that connect places and peoples across the boundaries of regions and countries (such as religion, migration/diaspora, media, literature and other arts, shared access to natural resources, cultural and economic continua, and resource flows), those that reconfigure local and translocal contexts (such as shifting borders, urbanization, and social movements), and those that are situated at the nexus of the global/regional/local (such as youth culture, tourist arts, and illicit flows).

This does not preclude proposals on other topics that engage with existing research expertise at the University of Göttingen.

Transregional Research Junior Scholar fellows will be selected through a two-part application process. Upon review of the preliminary applications submitted in September, the Selection Committee will invite select applicants to submit full narrative proposals in late fall 2017. Fellowships will be awarded in spring 2018, and fellowship funds can be disbursed flexibly over the sixteen-month period between May 1, 2018, and August 31, 2019.

Global Summer Semester Residency fellowships will be awarded in late fall 2017.

The application processes, eligibility criteria, and award amounts vary across competitions. Applications and additional fellowship details, including former fellows’ research abstracts and answers to frequently asked questions, are available on the program website at http://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/transregional-research-fellowship.